Corrupted mind
by ct2191
Summary: Sam's life was turned upside down after her sister arrived at the ED a month ago. Now she must fight against her own body and reclaim her life before she loses everything permanently.
1. Corrupted

Part of being a doctor means facing the death of your patients with courage and not turning away from your job as soon as it becomes difficult. It means dutifully telling the relatives with enough emotion to sound human yet not enough to actually feel anything more than a slight twinge of sadness. Younger doctors struggle with this ability, often finding themselves emotionally wrapped up in the case their dealing with to the point where their feelings impair their judgement.

Being a doctor on a battlefield leaves very little time for emotions, as you must make a diagnosis and stitch the fallen solider up as quickly as possible. There is no telling the relatives or feigning feelings, it's all about saving that person's life right that second and making sure you don't get killed doing it. Bullets and bombs generally build one up to the point where they have nerves of steel.

That being said you would expect someone who had spent the first third of their lives bouncing between the two, their emotional sturdiness likened to something as robust as titanium by their peers, to have superior control over their feelings to the point where they could always be relied upon to make the most rational decision in the face of extreme terror.

Wrong.

There is one vital floor that every person in a dangerous job possess, regardless of whether or not they are aware of it. Being human.

Having a connection with the human race means having a strong bond with those around you, and it's having ties with the world which leave us weak and open to attack. Doctors and army medics are only able to turn emotions off because they cannot treat relatives or loved ones within their place of work. When we see someone we care about in danger or threatened our training is overridden by a distinct urge to protect the person in peril. The closer the person is to us, the less rational we act and the more our empathy for that person drives our actions.

It can lead us to placing ourselves in danger by taking the fall for our relatives, for example, and when that relative is your sister you feel so compelled to protect and defend them that it very often leads to your demise in some way, shape or form. The bond you share with someone other than your parents before and after you embrace adulthood can be the strongest of all, especially when your parents are not a major part of either your or your sister's lives.

But even family bonds have their limits, especially when the dark path your sister sets you on when she turns up in the ED one freezing cold Monday morning overdosed on heroin causes you to take on the task of finding out of the source of what you later find out to be your sister's addiction.

…

"Morning, Tom." Bic Mac said, making an obvious show of ignoring the haughty figure standing beside him.

"Morning Mac. How are you?" Tom asked as cheerfully as he could, also making a show to ignore Sam.

Yet another Monday morning, several weeks after her sister had arrived at the ED, that was as cold as what you might imagine a grave to be. Big Mac, Tom and Sam were all standing outside for a moment, an unfortunate coincidence that they entered the carpark at the same time, warming up their hands outside the building to avoid the sudden change in temperature giving them chill blains.

Sam blocked the rest of the conversation Tom and Big Mac had now struck up out of her head. She didn't care. She had everything she needed in her back left pocket. After shouldering past Tom and ignoring the outraged look on Tess's face, for she had just exited her car as Sam did this, she crossed the ED floor got changed slowly in the locker room.

In truth working was just a formality, as they would get suspicious if she suddenly quit her job. Oh, but how she would love to just sit at home and rest all day, basking in the strip of winter sunlight that pours through her bedroom window and onto her satin sheets on days like this instead of lugging herself around an ED treating people who she couldn't bring herself to care about.

Following the slowest change of clothes known to mankind Sam decided to make an appearance. After all- she would lose her job entirely if Zoe caught her bunking in the locker room. Unfortunately for Sam she was contemplating a day of rest and relaxation, hanging around the ED and being found mysteriously absent at the first sign of any actual work to be done when a massive RTC came bursting through the doors.

Naturally Sam tried her best to move away, moving towards the lift and grabbing a nearby letter off of the reception desk in the hopes that people thought that she was delivering something somewhere, but by this point she had used the same guise several times and everyone had caught on to her little scheme.

"Dr Nicholls!" Barked Dixie.

Sam rolled her eyes and dropped the letter on the ground, ignoring Noel's complaints about littering and headed over to the patient. Sam walked alongside Dixie and Jeff as they wheeled what looked like a teenage girl into rhesus, but it took her a long while to realize that neither Dixie nor Jeff were reeling out the girl's vitals.

"_Well?" _Sam barked impatiently, knowing full well she had walked into a trap as Zoe was standing by the rhesus doors holding a clipboard, looking up at Sam occasionally as she wrote down something.

"Sally Mitchel, 15, involved in an RTC with a lorry. She was in the car which was hit, suffered a blunt force trauma to the abdomen and has suffered burns around her face and neck from the airbag. She KO'd briefly on route has had ten of morphine and is not complaining of any pain other than around her stomach area." Dixie said as quickly as she could.

"Ok let's give her ten of morphine." Sam said, but again found herself being stared at by a nurse who was refusing to move.

"I.." The nurse began, suddenly scared of the impatient look on Sam's face.

"Well get it then!" Sam sad impatiently as she made to remove the straps around the girl's neck.

"She's already had 10ml Sam!" Dixie exclaimed as she stopped Sam from taking of the straps that were keeping the girl's neck still, "And you need to send her for an X-Ray before we take those off! Her abdomen is the primary focus right now!"

Sam would have gone bright red if she could have forced herself to give a damn. Instead all she could manage was a very flat sounding 'oh'.

"Well then... let me examine her abdomen and can someone dig up her notes and call for a portable X-ray? She looks too unstable to move." Sam said, realizing, but not really caring, that she had only just saved this awkward situation and her career judging by the look on Zoe's face by a thread.

Seemingly satisfied by this course of action, or more likely because Zoe had signalled them to leave, Dixie and Jeff headed for the Rhesus doors and stalked out, muttering between themselves.

Sam was left to deal with her patient alone save for the ever watchful gaze of Zoe and a couple of yawns she did a reasonably good job, feigning concern when the young girl came around and starting calling for her mum. She even allowed the girl to grip her forearm for comfort during the X-ray, though she did spend the entire time silently begging her to not grip the sore part of her arm where the tracks of needle marks still hadn't healed yet so hard.

"Where are my parents?" The girl asked once the X-Ray was over.

"They'll be here soon." Sam said flatly as she flicked through the girl's notes.

Satisfied that there was nothing in them to cause concern, Sam replaced the notes in the holder at the end of her bed and began looking at the heart rate monitor, making a mental note of the fact that the girl's blood pressure was elevated.

Just as she did this Tom burst through the Rhesus doors with another patient and a couple of paramedics, and this patient looked to be in a far more serious condition than hers. Zoe immediately rushed over and began to help, her observation of Sam forgotten, and Sam watched from the sidelines as they all rushed about attempting to save his life while she wondered why they were bothering.

The man looked to be homeless as his bomber jacket was filthy, his hair unwashed and unkempt. His grey matted beard was covering most of his chest, and there were patches of dirt all over him. He looked to be between fifty and sixty years old, though in truth Sam was assuming that the supposed years of living on the street had aged him to look far older, and so he could have been around seventy if the deducted years were added back on.

Tom was barking out commands to nearby nurses and doctors, ordering them to hook the patient up to a nearby heart rate monitor as one of the paramedics reeled of his vitals, but before he could finish the monitor revealed that the man was in cardiac arrest and Zoe was shouting for a defibrillator.

After the man was bought back Sam found herself rapidly losing interest in the case and returning to her own daydreams of her bedroom and that glorious strip of sunlight. She dreamt of sleeping all day, waking only to inject herself with her lifeline or eat, maybe to go out for a late night stroll to the alleyway where _they_ were waiting for her. The tiny part of her mind that had not been consumed by the intoxicating substance being pumped around ever blood vessel in her body knew that she should fear and hate the people who had made her so devoid of emotion but the reason she didn't was an answer within itself.

Just as her hand started drifting towards her back left pocket once again she realized her daydreams were about to cost her dearly, as her patient's life was suddenly hanging in the balance. The young girl was now struggling to breath and looking around as though she was confused .She kept on trying to speak but it was slurred, which was making her panic even more.

"Anaphylaxis..." Sam muttered, "But how?!"

Sam quickly grabbed the notes of her patient once more and scanned them for a long moment. There, at the top of the last page on bold letters was what she had missed. The girl was allergic to morphine.

"Can I have some help over here?" Sam called as she lowered the headboard on the trolley so the girl was lying flat.

"What's wrong with her?!" Zoe called out over the screen that was separating her and Tom's patient.

"Anaphylaxis!" Sam called back before demanding the nearby nurse administer 0.3mg of adrenaline.

As soon as Sam injected the hormone the girl's breathing immediately began to return to normal, and her chest began to rise and fall more slowly. Sam would have breathed out a sigh of relief had she been able to drum up the slightest bit of sympathy.

"How the hell did you miss this?" Zoe exclaimed.

Sam spun around and came face to face with an irate looking Zoe holding the girl's notes and pointing to the red writing Sam had only noticed moments before.

"I didn't see it." Sam stated.

"Someone call Ash and tell him to take over here. Sam, my office. _Now_." Zoe said in a voice which would have made a grown man shudder but yet again Sam was unaffected.

As she was led across the ED floor once more and into Zoe's office she noticed that Tess had left her nurse's station and joined Zoe. Sam was also aware of the fact that she was no the centre of attention as even though she doubted Noel and Louise, who were standing at reception staring at her, had heard Zoe's shouts behind the closed Rhesus doors but the colour Zoe's face had turned told them all they needed to know. Sam was in big trouble and she didn't seem to care on bit.

"Please tell me you have suddenly gone blind and the fact that you missed the big bold red letters on that girl's notes which was a clear indication that the girl was allergic to morphine was not due to your incompetence!" Zoe said in an oddly flat voice.

"No I'm not blind but I did miss the writing. I guess I didn't see the last page." Sam said calmly.

"How the hell" Began Zoe in a voice that Sam not so fondly remembered was the exact tone she always used before blowing up at someone, "Did a senior member of staff come so close to killing a teenage girl?"

"Like I said." Sam said flatly, fully aware that her ears were about to ring but not really caring, "I must have missed it."

"Sam. I am going to give you one chance to change your attitude and apologize for what you've done here or I am going to put you on report and confine you to working in cubicles for the next month." Zoe said as the tension in her voice built up.

"I don't think that's likely." Tess said as she folded her arms and gave Sam one of her sternest stares, "She's been rude to my nurses and refused to apologize every time I've bought it up."

Sam didn't bother listening to what Tess had to say, already positive that it was most likely her blathering on about her poor overworked underpaid nurses or something similar. Internally she was almost happy. Being confined to cubicles meant she didn't have to spend hours on end with one patient, and could hide away more easily. She didn't want to work in Rhesus and this seemed like the perfect way out. She thought it best to make a show of how little she cared by raising her eyebrows as she replied,

"Zoe how many times do I have to tell you? I didn't see the _big red letters. _I don't see why I should apologize when it's clearly whatever stupid nurse or doctor decided it would be a good idea to write crucial information at the back of a patient's notes instead of at the front's fault."

"Tess." Zoe said in a sickly sweet tone that sounded just as pleasing to the ears as nails on a blackboard, "Would you mind leaving?"

"My pleasure." Tess said, sparing a moment to give Sam one of her most distasteful glares before shutting the door behind her.

"Sam. I am going to repeat this once, and only once. _Apologize. Now." _ Zoe said with a furious undertone.

If Sam could have drummed up enough emotion she would have smiled internally.

"I am not going to apologize for someone else's mistake." She replied flatly.

"And I am not going to stand for this incompetence for one more second!" Zoe yelled.

"Please tell me how exactly I am incompetent when it is clear that, as I have already said, whoever decided to write crucial information at the back of someone's notes instead of the front is clearly to blame."

"I'm not just talking about today! You've been like this for the last month: avoiding Rhesus patients, hanging around reception pretending that you're doing things when really you don't even have a reason to be there, sleeping in the On-Call room for hours on end, being extremely rude to the nurses and when you actually do some work god forbid you are rude to the patients as well!" Zoe shouted, counting the reasons off on her fingers.

"I resent those accusations." Sam said in a monotone which showed Zoe just how much she cared.

In truth Sam had bigger problems. The tiny amount of human emotion she was left with was now starting to grow, which could only mean one thing. She needed a fix, and fast. She could feel it, that nagging pain in her head and that yearning feeling in her gut. Her body was crying out for its poison and Sam not being able to provide it with it's toxic nourishment was causing it to hurt her until it got what it required. To her surprise, however, something unusual was happening to Zoe when she looked back up.

She was sitting at her desk with her head in her hands, glasses on the table. Sam was no longer the best judge of human emotion, but Zoe did appear to be upset.

"What happened to you?" Zoe mumbled, staring up at Sam with more than a hint of concern.

"I- Excuse me?" Sam asked, taken aback by the sudden u-turn of emotions.

"Sam, when I hired you you were a strong and competent doctor, able to treat patients with the respect they deserved and diagnose them flawlessly. You had respect for those you worked with and never treated anyone here like they were dirt on your shoe but now… Something's changed. I'm just asking if something has happened, if something's wrong. You're not yourself and I'm concerned. By what I heard you broke up with Tom and he's furious with you for some reason he won't discuss."

"I'm…" Sam began.

More emotions were now seeping through and breaking the weakened barrier of drugs that usually held them back. Sam considered telling Zoe the truth, what happened after her sister was bought into the ED, but she knew she couldn't. A part of her still cared for her job and knew that if she did she would lose it. No one wants a drug addicted doctor.

"I'm fine, Zoe." Sam said as calmly as she could, trying to ignore how the nagging pain in her head had now turned into a distinct throb.

"No. You're not." Zoe said as she straightened up and a hint of her fire returned to her, "Because all the while you act like this you're a danger in my ED. No one want s to help you, no one has your back. If you make a mistake like you did today-don't roll your eyes at me- and no one's around you're going to fall, and fall hard. Usually nurses also check through the notes as they fill in any medications the patient has had, and nurse who was with you didn't bother to alert you to the problem most likely because she was too afraid to. You're not a team player, and people who aren't team players in an emergency department get their patients killed."

Sam stared at Zoe for a long moment, her emotional barriers now down to the point where she could actually feel once more. What's worse was she was beginning to sweat as the strain of trying to ignore the craving took its toll on her.

"So can I go now?" Sam asked as calmly and coldly as she could.

"Yes… But Sam," Zoe said, stopping her with her handle on the door.

"Yes?" Sam called somewhat impatiently.

"If I don't see a marked improvement in your behaviour over the next month you're on report then I am going to be taken action. Understood?"

Sam didn't wait to hear what those measures were going to be, as her mind was focussed on something else. In fact, every part of her body was now focussed on getting what it felt it needed. As soon as she was out of the office Sam headed towards the toilets at a run and pushed opened the door, scaring off the nurse who was in there and hastily checking all the cubicles to make sure no one else was in there.

Satisfied Sam opened the cubicle furthest away form the door and went inside, locking it behind her. Before she sat down she pulled out the small syringe that had been living in her left back pocket and took the protective cap off of the needle. Lying in her hands was the syringe full of what her body so desperately craved. Heroin.

Without waiting Sam rolled up one of the sleeves of the long sleeve shirt she was wearing and began examining her arms for a viable access point, but was slightly worried to discover none. Her body crying out for the drug in her hands she resorted to taking off her trainer and socks and stabbing the needle into the arch of her foot, enjoying the cool sensation as the liquid travelled through her veins.

The effect was instant. One minute Sam was anxious and sweaty and the next she was on a cloud of tranquillity, her body and mind now satisfied that her addiction has been fed. After waiting a few minutes for the tranquillity to wear off somewhat Sam forced herself to stand and after struggling to get her trainer back on, unlocked the cubicle door and stepped out of the toilets onto the ED.

Sam took a moment to stare at the hustling and bustling going on around her before taking a few steps forward, ready to emerge herself in the crowds of nurses and doctors without doing any work. She was about to go over and join then when a tall figure who she didn't recognise immediately as Tom grabbed hr upper arm and frog marched her behind one of the many pillars that were holding the ED ceiling up.

"You're a train wreck." He hissed, "Why haven't you been fired yet?"

"Why are you talking to me?" Sam said flatly back.

"Because you endanger the life of every patient you touch. Zoe should have fired you." Tom said forcefully, staring at Sam with a look of disgust.

"Well thankfully for me it's not up to you to make that call." Sam said in a monotone.

With that Sam pulled her arm out of his grip, rubbing the area where Tom's thumb had upset the needle marks, and walked away. The drug hadn't infiltrated every corner of her mind yet, and the tiny amount of her brain still left with a somewhat normal functioning pattern was worried about whether or not Tom knew how close he was to the truth when he called her a train wreck.

…


	2. Insanity

The rest of the day went about as well as the start for Sam, but of course she couldn't bring herself to care. Firstly Zoe spent the entire time scrutinizing her every move and so Sam was forced to inject some amount of passion into her voice to save her job, which also meant she had to work. Secondly Tom and Tess spent a lot of the morning muttering amongst themselves while pointing and staring at Sam every so often. In her drugged state Sam discovered that it was impossible for her to become irritated, but apparently her curiosity was intact.

She spent a lot of her time trying to get close enough to hear what they were saying but they caught onto her plans very quickly and hastily moved away every time she got close, and so Sam was forced to continue on with sewing up deep cuts and getting thrown up on while being watched by what felt like half of the ED.

By the time it got around to lunch Sam was tired, and so instead of going to the cafeteria and filling her stomach with some most likely much needed nourishment she fell onto a bed in the on call room after locking the door. Before this whole heroin debacle started Sam found falling asleep exceedingly difficult, but now someone only had to mention the word sleep and her eyes started closing.

The only problem was waking up was a different story entirely, and it wasn't until Zoe started banging on the door like a wild person did Sam finally drift back into consciousness once again.

"That was rude." Sam said in her usual toneless voice.

"Lunch ended an hour ago and you look like you haven't eaten in days. If we weren't so understaffed I would send you with money to go and buy a cheeseburger like a child, but I don't have the time. Get back to work. Now." Zoe said moodily.

Sam complied, ignoring the looks she was receiving from Tom, Tess and everyone grouped around reception as she calmly walked over to the nurse's station and grabbed a patient's file as though nothing was happening. Truthfully in her deluded mind's eye there was nothing going on, as though she was aware of the fact everyone was staring at her in her eyes that was nothing out of the ordinary.

The reason for this staring soon reared its head, as when Sam walked over to the patient she was supposed to be dealing with, an elderly woman who had taken a fall and cut her forehead, that same patient jumped back in fright.

"Dear I think you need to sit down…" The woman said as she eyed Sam with a look of pure terror.

"I'm fine." Sam said flatly.

The woman's wide eyes did make Sam think twice about giving such a flat answer, but any emotional response was quickly quashed by the heroin still circulating her system.

"Dear you're as white as a sheet… and your eyes. There's something wrong." The woman said, clutching at the handles on a plastic bag filled of clothing she was holding.

Sam glanced at the windows at the entrance, trying to see her reflection. Somehow a tiny amount of shock had made its way into her features as she noticed the evident constriction around her pupils that the old woman must have been referring to and pale complexion she was now sporting. She wasn't expecting to look wonderful; after all she had been purposefully avoiding looking in the mirror since this whole nightmare started, too ashamed of what she was doing at the start and now she couldn't bring herself to bother with her appearance, but she wasn't expecting to look like some kind of fangless vampire.

"Come on." Sam said, moving her features back to their usual dull arrangement as she made to take the woman's arm and move her over the cubicles.

"No!" The woman nearly screamed, wrenching her arm out of Sam's grip and staring at her warily, "I want a doctor who doesn't look like they're supposed to be a patient themselves!"

"Looks like I'll handle this." Tom said, coming up from behind Sam and snatching the patient file out of her grip.

"This is my patient." Sam said flatly, making to get the file back.

"Not any more." Tom said simply as he offered her hand to the woman who smiled and walked away with him.

Sam merely stood there meekly as Zoe stormed over and grabbed her arm, pulling her to one side away from the several pairs of eyes that had once again rested on her.

"You haven't even been working for five minutes and you're already terrifying the patients! What is wrong with you?" Zoe shouted, making dragging her to one side away form prying eyes a pointless exercise.

"That was hardly my fault." Sam replied.

"Not your…?! Sam you look like you're about to pass out at any moment! For god's sake take the rest of the day off and get some food into you!" Zoe exclaimed.

"I thought you were understaffed." Sam said with a slight look of confusion.

"At the rate you're going I won't have to worry about that because you'll scare away all our patients. Sam... Just get back here tomorrow and try wearing some makeup to cover those ghastly grey circles under your eyes." Zoe said before stalking off.

Sam didn't waste any time after getting her marching orders, casually walking into the cloakroom and grabbing her coat without bothering to return the bizarre looks she was getting off of some of her colleagues. After shrugging it over her arms and ignoring the sharp pains that shot through the needle marks on her arms because of the friction she simply then re entered the ED.

Following something that would have reminded Sam of a walk of shame as she made her way through the centre of the ED with all eyes on her if she could have feigned any kind of emotional response to what was going on around her, Sam headed through the car park and sat on the freezing cold red plastic seat underneath the bus shelter.

The only sound decision she had made in quite a while was to not use her car to get to and from work, as getting pulled over with a metaphorical tonne of heroine in her bloodstream would not bode well for her driving license or career.

Having no sound emotional response to anything had its advantages when you were sitting at a bus shelter in the middle of winter under a canopy of clouds that looked like they were about to cover the ground in snow in any second, as anyone else would have been quite anxious for the bus to get there sooner rather than later. Sam simply sat there staring up at the sky every so often, acknowledging that it was a dull day but anything else was beyond her at this point.

When her bus did finally arrive Sam stepped aboard and made her way upstairs in the hopes of avoiding the screaming babies in buggies and mothers discussing children's TV shows that usually congregated on the ground floor. Even when your emotional capacity is significantly diminished wailing infants still find a way to grate on your last nerve.

Luckily for her the upper floor was completely deserted, as most of the people that Sam usually saw up here did not leave work until the evening. Just before Sam could reach her usual seat at front of the bus it started to pull away, and she was forced to stumble over to it as the bus whipped around a corner.

If there was one tiny thing she missed about being in a relationship with Tom it was his house. They had only been living together for a short time and when Sam was first exposed to heroin her relationship was the first thing to end, but her memories of that nice two story house with decent heating stuck in her mind most because of how drab her new home was by comparison.

The bus stopped around three metres short of the estate block Sam was now forced to reside in. It formed part of the Farmead estate, well known for its gangs, which was completely run down. Her new home was also tiny, with a bathroom that barely has enough floor space to stand in. The living room had graffiti all over the walls, marking the times that local gangs had used it as a hideout before they were undoubtedly flushed out by the local police. There was an ugly pale green sofa in the middle of the room when she first arrived but nothing else, and all Sam did when she moved in was merely push this to one side and leave the room bare. The adjoining kitchen was ransacked- no cooker, a glass cabinet in pieces on the ground and a tiny microwave that didn't work.

In fact the only room in the house that Sam had put some effort into was the bedroom, or more specifically the bed. She had spent an entire month's wages on the most comfortable bed she could possibly afford when she and Tom were a couple, and got some silky smooth linen to boot. She wasted no time hauling that thing out of his home when they broke up just so she would have a comfortable place to sleep. All she dreamed of doing was resting for as long as possible, and so there was no need to pay any attention to the other rooms, that and she now had no money to spend.

Another problem with her house was that the only view she got out of her windows three stories up was that of the overused rubbish tip below, with a smell worse than how it looked as Sam had come to discover when she went to open the window one morning.

As she travelled up the remaining distance to her front door via the tiny lift that juddered and halted so much that Sam thought it was going to break the first time she rode in it her thoughts were already turning to those satin sheets, and save for the blonde haired woman who seemed to wear the same overbearingly bright pink top every time Sam saw her smoking like there was no tomorrow and looking like a steam train to boot there was nothing really getting in her way.

Sam found herself thankful to exit the lift and breathe in the closest you could get to fresh air in the city, as even polluted air was better than the cigarette smoke filled version, as she hurried to her rickety lime green front door.

As with many of that flats on this particular estate putting they key in the lock was just so any passersby didn't notice that one good shove and the door would have opened anyway, and today Sam was too tired to even so much as reach in her jacket pocket and grab her keys so she checked no one was around and gave the door a good shove, entering her flat and shutting the door as firmly as the rotting wooden frame would allow.

Sam fumbled around for a few seconds, getting a coating of dust over her hands as she struggled to find the light switch. When she finally did she strode into the bathroom and washed her hand of before going back into the living room. If she had forgone the bathroom she would have noticed the person who managed to drum up an emotional response from her no matter how many times she was shot up with heroin sitting on the couch with a small paper bag beside him.

"What do you want?" Sam said coldly.

"I want to give you your latest instalment of food for your body and a little something to keep the cravings away with the added bonus of having you around my little finger." He said calmly with a smile.

In the dim light his face looked gaunt with sunken in cheekbones and deep circles under his eyes. His dark hair was matted, his leather jacket torn in several places just like his jeans were. She had forgotten what night it was.

"Just leave the bag and go crawl under a rock." Sam said as tonelessly as ever.

"No no no." The man said in a taunting voice, waggling his little finger at her, "We need to talk."

He patted the space on the seat next to him and patiently waited for her to sit down and upon deciding that there was no other way to get him to leave she did as he asked. This, as it turned out, was her first mistake of the evening.

As soon as her rear had touched the moth eaten cushions she felt his fingers around the back of her neck as he forced her to look at him.

"You forgot what day I was coming, didn't you? Hard to keep track of days with a load of crap in your veins, isn't it?" He said mockingly.

"I'm sorry." Sam said through clenched teeth.

"Pah. Like hell you are. You were _supposed _to take a day off work and be here first thing in the morning so I could get out of this damned estate as quickly as I came in, but I'm forced to wait for you. I shouldn't have bothered."

"Why did you then?" Sam asked and before she could stop yourself added, "It's not like anyone would miss you around here."

With that remark she felt the fingers at the bank of her neck move around to the front and apply a small amount of pressure to her windpipe.

"Ungrateful bitch!" He shouted, slapping her hard across the face, "What would you do without me, eh? You get your supply delivered straight to your doorstep and yet you are still as insolent as the day we met! Maybe I should just take my heroin and go back home…"

"No!" Sam said quickly, nursing her busted lip now that his hands were off of her neck.

"Addicts. They're all the same. Threaten to cut off their supply and they'll lick your grubby feet to make sure you don't. You went down faster than your sister did, at least if I threatened to take her supply away she put up a fight to get back to normality."

"If you hurt her I'll... I'll…" Sam stuttered, shocked by the blood that was dripping down her face and fully aware that the stress of the situation was making her cravings return.

At that he laughed like a Hyena before asking, "You'll what? _Grovel _me into submission? Scare me with your ghostly complexion? Threaten to tell your big boyfriend- oh I'm sorry- big _Ex _boyfriend? Face it. There is nothing you can do. All the while I have your sister cooped up somewhere you have to do what I say, and I say you keep taking that shit and do as I tell you seeing as you don't even have half of what you need to pay off your sister's debts, not to mention your own!"

"My own? You never said-"

"Do you think this stuff magically falls out of the sky? It's hard work getting hold of it, let alone getting it into a neighbourhood where the police are on an anti drug brigade! Of course you owe me money on top of what your sister owes, and I know you're treating your job like a formality! At this rate you'll never see her again." He said, watching her with a disgusted expression as she placed a hand over the bleeding cut on her lip.

"My job? How do you know…?" Sam said with a slight shake to her voice.

"You know that old lady you were planning on treating before your big scary boyfriend came over and stole the case? She was a plant. She had a little er… _accident _and I took full advantage of that. She reported back to me and told me you look half dead, and I see she wasn't wrong. I have eyes and ears all over town, and you chose a very unlucky place to rent out a flat. I have men keeping an eye on you all over this estate, and a guy watching your boyfriend to make sure he is none the wiser. I own you." He said before throwing the plastic bag at her. "Eat the burger."

Sam meekly did what she was told, pulling out the hamburger and devouring it, as now that the drug had pretty much run out of her system her appetite was no longer suppressed and she was ravenous.

"You're disgusting. Here." He said, stooping down so he was beside her and pulling out one of the syringes that were also in the paper bag which was absolutely full of heroin, "I added more into each syringe this time to hopefully keep those cravings away for longer. You may feel a little weird for a few hours after this but it'll be good after that, I promise."

Suddenly the tiniest spark of sanity that Sam had left made itself known, and she tried to crawl away. She didn't want to be like this, she wanted her life back, her boyfriend back and she didn't want to lose her job. She didn't want to lose everything…

Naturally Sam was too weak to get very far away from him, and so soon felt a sharp pain in the top part of her thigh. She cried out as the cold liquid rushed into her veins, but this was quickly quashed as the full effects of the increased dosage made her entire body go limp. Next thing she knew she was being carried by her enabler into her bedroom, before he chucked her on the bed and made to leave but not before getting one last insult in.

"You're pathetic."

Sam barely comprehended what he said, too high to care. The feeling was somewhat euphoric, her head in the clouds. But something was different.

A small voice in the back of her mind was trying to drag her back down to reality, trying to make her regain her sanity. It was telling her everything she had lost but still needed, everything that made her human. It took a while for the heroin to silence this voice, as even with such a high dosage its resilience had left a mark. Before the very last thread of sanity she possessed was destroyed for the moment, Sam realized that voice was probably her conscience.

…

_**Thanks a lot for the reviews! I'll update again as soon as I can. **_


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